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Event
Merrimans' Playhouse Jazz Performance Series presents Nancy Harms featuring Jeremy Siskind!
Nancy Harms (vocals) featuring Jeremy Siskind (piano): "Ellington at Night" CD Release Tour. Nancy Harms: Beautiful, unique, and exquisitely talented. A truly charismatic, one-of-a-kind performer. "she engages the listener by seeming to put her whole soul completely forwardafter hearing her just once, you'll never want to let her go." --Will Friedwald, The Wall Street Journal. Jeremy Siskind is a pianist, composer, and educator based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The winner of the 2012 Nottingham International Jazz Piano Competition, Siskind has served on the piano faculty of Western Michigan University since 2012, including as chair the Keyboard Area since 2014. His 2015 CD, Housewarming, featuring Grammy-winning singers Kurt Elling and Peter Eldridge, was named the second-best vocal jazz CD of the year by the Ottawa Citizen, and hailed as a shining example of chamber jazz in Downbeat magazine, who also named it among the years best.
-Quotes about ELLINGTON AT NIGHT:
"....suddenly lets her power loose on key phrases that display a reserve of swinging authority....Ms. Harms's show wasn't all impressionistic dreaminess. A tough, demanding swinger emerged in up-tempo numbers....Ms. Harms revealed the determination of a strong, independent woman who knows what she wants..... The final impression left by Ms. Harms was of a complicated enigmatic woman of mystery forging her own path."
- - STEPHEN HOLDEN, NEW YORK TIMES
What makes Ellington at Night so remarkable is the way that Nancy Harms and chief collaborator Jeremy Siskind have found a whole new way to sing Ellington, one that's perfectly in keeping with the Ellington tradition, yet, at the same time, fresh and original. ..her vocal timbre might be characterized as "cool" though there's an undeniable warmth to her singing as well. Her sound is understated, yet it doesn't hold anything back. She doesn't give us anything more than we need no note is unnecessarily higher or longer than it should be and yet her spirit and energy are giving, even generous beyond the cool of duty. She swings like crazy, but she never makes the rhythm more important than the narrativethere's no doubt as to exactly what she means.Ellington's most familiar songs...sound anything but overdone when Nancy sings them I can only imagine that on whatever turquoise cloud (Ellington) might be reclining on, he couldn't help but love her madly.
WILL FRIEDWALD (on the subject of the upcoming "ELLINGTON AT NIGHT" album by NANCY HARMS)
"Both jazz- and cabaretland could learn a lot from the elegant, understated, but beautifully expressive tribute to Duke Ellington that Nancy Harms gave on Wednesday at the Metropolitan Room. .....this show, and Nancy's featherweight, postcoital sound, made even Ellington warhorses sound new to my ears...."
-- JAMES GAVIN (Author, "IS THAT ALL THERE IS - The strange life of Peggy Lee")
Born and raised in Minnesota, Harms relocated to New York City in 2010. She has toured Europe multiple times since 2011, with her most recent tours taking her to such prestigious venues as Copenhagen's "Standard", and sold-out concerts in top Paris venues Sunset Sunside (Sept. 14) and "New Morning" (March 15). Nancy has performed at "Herr Nilsen" in Oslo, and other stops in Norway, Italy, and Denmark. She has played Norways SORTLAND JAZZ FEST twice (in 2010 and 2014).... Nancys NYC appearances have included her own shows at BIRDLAND, ZINC BAR , SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, THE KITANO, 55 BAR, ROCKWOOD MUSIC HALL, and several other venues, including a series of performances with trombone legend WYCLIFFE GORDON; among them DIZZYS CLUB COCA-COLA, THE LENOX LOUNGE, and concerts in Toulouse, France.
Her most recent Manhattan appearance was in the famed METROPOLITAN ROOM, where she premiered her brand new show entitled "ELLINGTON AT NIGHT", in which the NEW YORK TIMES described her as "...[;an]; enigmatic woman of mystery forging her own path". .In addition to her own CDs DREAMS IN APARTMENTS and IN THE INDIGO, she appears on WYCLIFFE GORDONS disc HELLO POPS and on JEREMY SISKINDS releases FINGER-SONGWRITER and "HOUSEWARMING".
Nancy appeared in the 2014 PITTSBURGH JAZZLIVE FESTIVAL and headlined a stage at the 2015 COPENHAGEN JAZZ FESTIVAL. ..One of her self-penned tunes from the "Dreams In Apartments" album ("Weight Of The World") placed 3rd in Popjazzradio.com's international listener poll of top jazz tunes of 2014 with over a million votes. ..Nancy was nominated for 2015 BroadwayWorld.com New York Cabaret Awards in two categories: Best Show, Female (For Ellington At Night), and Best Jazz Vocalist.
Nancy is currently touring in support of her latest album release, ELLINGTON AT NIGHT and her CD release shows will include performances at Dizzys Club Coca-Cola at LINCOLN CENTER (NYC), and The Elgar Room in Londons ROYAL ALBERT HALL.
www.nancyharms.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guUjYgDiLb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZr3pHCMzqQ
In a relatively short time, Nancy Harms has distinguished herself as one of the most uniquely gifted young jazz vocalists on the East Coast. Born and raised in the tiny Midwestern town of Clara City, Minnesota, Nancy had no exposure to jazz as a child, no connections to the music via family or education. Though she was singing for small public gatherings by the age of four, it wasnt until attending Concordia College in Moorhead, MN that Harms discovered jazz.
Though this discovery would change her life, Nancy made no immediate decision to pursue a jazz-performing career after college. Instead, she taught elementary music in another small Minnesota town for a few years; a move that was more along the lines of what was expected of a girl from Clara City. Nancy ultimately became disillusioned and discontented, however, and within her grew the conviction that another kind of musical life was awaiting her. She followed her instinct and her passion, left her teaching career, and moved to Minneapolis in 2006.
Nancy immersed herself in Minneapolis-St. Pauls local jazz scene, and by early 2007, people in the community were taking notice. In the most positive sense, no one had ever seen or heard anyone quite like Nancy before: She possessed a stateliness that was unmistakable, yet she was totally unpretentious in manner. She sang ballads with a folk-like, delicate, ethereal quality and a marvelous way of digging deep into the layers of lyrical meaning. Initially, her most noteworthy attribute from a jazz perspective was her sense of time: She clearly possessed a natural gift for phrasing and an innate sense of swing. Of no small importance to her growing popularity as well was the fact that she was uniquely beautiful, in both sound and appearance.
Nancy learned fast over the next three and a half years, honing her style and developing her chops. Before long, she was a major Twin Cities jazz attraction, regularly working in major jazz clubs and concerts, earning terrific reviews and critics accolades. In 2009 she released IN THE INDIGO, her first CD, and Minnesotas most popular and highly acclaimed jazz vocal release of that year.
Nancys career in NYC began with a sold-out appearance in the summer of 2010 at the Bar Next Door on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, with classy accompaniment by former Minnesotan Michael OBrien on bass and NY guitar legend Paul Bollenback. Observable at this or any other engagement since is Harms highly original physical presence; always in motion, yet always in service of the music and telling the story. The beautiful face is animated, but not overly so. There is mystery there, with abundant smiles and good humor, but the occasional flash of something untold; a sudden downward tightening of the mouth and far-away focus of the eyes She seems to draw upon a passing sense-memory to more effectively convey the feeling of the lyric. Often, its a sense of hurt, or the pain of long ago; artfully intermingling with the good humor and inviting warmth of Nancys overall persona.
Nancys dedication to jazz is complete. She is abundantly gifted, and her interpretations reveal her to be a fine actor as well, as she possesses a natural ability to movingly express the meaning of any song. A gifted jazz specialist and an intuitively brilliant interpretive artist.
Her first CD In The Indigo put her on 140 radio and cable outlets in dozens of markets, and top sales on the CDBaby Jazz vocal chart. The CD received national airplay on PRIs JAZZ AFTER HOURS, NPR, THE PENTHOUSE RADIO NETWORK, and MUSIC CHOICE via satellite, cable and internet. Nancys follow-up disc, Dreams In Apartments, was even more successful, airing on the above (and other) sources, including Jonathan Schwartzs broadcasts, and on the PopJazzRadio.com channel which placed one of Nancys original songs, Weight Of The World, in the #1 position on two separate occasions with over 44,000 votes from fans. Nancy went on to celebrate the release of Dreams In Apartments at New York Citys venerable BIRDLAND, as well as to share the albums success with audiences in Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Paris.
Nancy Harms: Beautiful, unique, and exquisitely talented. A truly charismatic, one-of-a-kind performer.
Jeremy Siskind is a pianist, composer, and educator based in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The winner of the 2012 Nottingham International Jazz Piano Competition, Siskind has served on the piano faculty of Western Michigan University since 2012, including as chair the Keyboard Area since 2014. His 2015 CD, Housewarming, featuring Grammy-winning singers Kurt Elling and Peter Eldridge, was named the second-best vocal jazz CD of the year by the Ottawa Citizen, and hailed as a shining example of chamber jazz in Downbeat magazine, who also named it among the years best.
As a performer, Siskind is a leader of the in-home concert movement, having performed in about 90 homes in 25 different states since 2012. A two-time finalist for the American Pianist Associations Cole Porter Fellowship, Siskind has also performed at traditional venues, such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center, as well as in Japan, Switzerland, Thailand, England, India, France, Tunisia, and China. Siskind currently has eight publications with Hal Leonard, including the major instructional book, Jazz Band Pianist.
Upcoming projects include collaborative songwriting project with composer Lucas Pino that will debut at Dizzys in Lincoln Center in June. The piece, entitled, Golden Rule, Turing Test, examines whether the nature of compassion is changing in the digital age. Siskind serves as musical director, arranger, and pianist on vocalist Nancy Harms upcoming CD, Ellington at Night. Finally, hes collaborating with saxophonist Andrew Rathbun on reinterpretations of Debussys Préludes for the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in May.
Jeremy Siskind holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (Jazz Performance and Music Theory) and Columbia University (English and Comparative Literature). Hes the Artistic Director of the American Jazz Pianist Competition. Jeremy Siskind is a Yamaha artist.
$10 Advanced, $13 Door, $8 Student
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LocationMerrimans' Playhouse (View)
1215 Mishawaka Ave.
South Bend, IN 46615
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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Apr 23, 2016 7:31 AM |
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Apr 19, 2016 7:19 AM |
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